Customer Reviews

The house of shade

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M M Kaye is best known for her India romantic epic "The Far Pavilions" as well as "Shadow Of The Moon" and "Trade Wind", all of which I have read and enjoyed. However she also wrote several murder mysteries set in different parts of the world that she had visited in her well-travelled life. "House of Shade" is a collection of three of M M Kaye's murder mysteries: Death In Zanzibar, Death in the Andamans and Death in Kashmir, all written with her excellent eye for detail, place and history.

DEATH IN ZANZIBAR

This book is a semi-sequel to "Trade Winds" where the descendant of hero and heroine of that story, Dany Ashton, finds herself visiting Zanzibar and becoming involved in various murders. She's helped by the smooth Lash although is not quite sure if he is actually the murderer. It's written with M M Kaye's usual flair for place and description but reading it with 21st century eyes it felt rather old-fashioned, particularly in the rather stereotypical characters. Perhaps that's how people thought/behaved in the 1930s but it felt a little uncomfortable to me.

DEATH IN THE ANDAMANS

First things first, where are the Andamans? I suppose I had a vague feeling they were one of those tiny dots on the map in the pacific somewhere, or perhaps around Japan or something. Shows what I know - they are a small group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. M M Kaye had visited them when younger and been marooned briefly on one of the islands after a storm and this gave her the idea for the novel.

Death In The Andamans deals with - what else? - an unexplained death. The owner of a coconut plantation, Ferrers Shilto, is in a cluster of small boats along with seven other people in a huge storm. The boats capsize, everyone is hanging on for dear life but when they are rescued sometime later Ferrers is missing. He turns up as a corpse brought in by the waves a day later - but did he drown?

This book has a lot of people in it - not only the eight on the boats but various other people, all of whom, it seems, may have had reason to murder Shilto or may have confused him with someone else that they wanted to murder. The story is partially narrated by two girls, Copper Randal and her friend Valerie; Valerie lives on the island with her stepfather, Copper is visiting for Christmas. Valerie is engaged to Charles who is in the army that is stationed on the Andamans, Copper has found herself rather intrigued by Nick Tarrent who is visiting the island from a naval ship and gets stranded on the island during the storm. Although billed on the front of the book as a "romance" I wouldn't really say that's particularly accurate - the love story isn't particularly significant and just bumbles along in the background.

The cast of characters, being so vast, means that we don't really get to know any of them that well. The action takes place at a good pace and we're never bored but I did find myself getting a bit swamped by all those people with murder on their minds. People also seemed to speak in a "jolly hockeysticks" fashion which perhaps was accurate but seemed rather quaint. People talked about the "beastly weather" and I wondered if I'd fallen into an Enid Blyton book. The point of view sometimes changed rather confusingly mid-stream as well.

The eventual unmasking of the perpetrator was perhaps a little disappointing - although clues had been left for the reader it's unlikely anyone would have guessed for sure who it was, and it could equally well have been one of many other people. Still, it was an interesting book purely in terms of the description of the Andaman Islands and a look back into the different lives people led at the tail end of the British Empire.

DEATH IN KASHMIR

In "Death In Kashmir" M M Kaye paints a fascinating picture of Kashmir on the cusp of independence, when the British rule in India finished in 1947. Her descriptions and evocation of the time and place are excellent and provide an interesting setting for her plot. Unfortunately I felt the characters in this story were rather wooden, they all spoke in a rather over-dramatic "jolly hockeysticks" style and were perhaps rather crude ciphers of normal people.

There's a faint (very faint!) romance in this story but this is a minor part of the plot which is about intelligence operatives becoming compromised and killed in Kashmir and our heroine, Sarah Parrish, finding herself in the thick of it. There are various minor plot twists, creeping around in the dark, that kind of thing, but overall this story was rather a disappointment. I found myself skim-reading the end, especially when the anti-communist paranoia of earlier decades appeared in this book. The setting is excellent but unfortunately this book is let down by characterisation and the rather over-long plot.

M M Kaye is best known for her India romantic epic "The Far Pavilions" as well as "Shadow Of The Moon" and "Trade Wind", all of which I have read and enjoyed. However she also wrote several murder mysteries set in different parts of the world that she had visited in her well-travelled life. "House of Shade" is a collection of three of M M Kaye's murder mysteries: Death In Zanzibar, Death in the Andamans and Death in Kashmir, all written with her excellent eye for detail, place and history.

DEATH IN ZANZIBAR

This book is a semi-sequel to "Trade Winds" where the descendant of hero and heroine of that story, Dany Ashton, finds herself visiting Zanzibar and becoming involved in various murders. She's helped by the smooth Lash although is not quite sure if he is actually the murderer. It's written with M M Kaye's usual flair for place and description but reading it with 21st century eyes it felt rather old-fashioned, particularly in the rather stereotypical characters. Perhaps that's how people thought/behaved in the 1930s but it felt a little uncomfortable to me.

DEATH IN THE ANDAMANS

First things first, where are the Andamans? I suppose I had a vague feeling they were one of those tiny dots on the map in the pacific somewhere, or perhaps around Japan or something. Shows what I know - they are a small group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. M M Kaye had visited them when younger and been marooned briefly on one of the islands after a storm and this gave her the idea for the novel.

Death In The Andamans deals with - what else? - an unexplained death. The owner of a coconut plantation, Ferrers Shilto, is in a cluster of small boats along with seven other people in a huge storm. The boats capsize, everyone is hanging on for dear life but when they are rescued sometime later Ferrers is missing. He turns up as a corpse brought in by the waves a day later - but did he drown?

This book has a lot of people in it - not only the eight on the boats but various other people, all of whom, it seems, may have had reason to murder Shilto or may have confused him with someone else that they wanted to murder. The story is partially narrated by two girls, Copper Randal and her friend Valerie; Valerie lives on the island with her stepfather, Copper is visiting for Christmas. Valerie is engaged to Charles who is in the army that is stationed on the Andamans, Copper has found herself rather intrigued by Nick Tarrent who is visiting the island from a naval ship and gets stranded on the island during the storm. Although billed on the front of the book as a "romance" I wouldn't really say that's particularly accurate - the love story isn't particularly significant and just bumbles along in the background.

The cast of characters, being so vast, means that we don't really get to know any of them that well. The action takes place at a good pace and we're never bored but I did find myself getting a bit swamped by all those people with murder on their minds. People also seemed to speak in a "jolly hockeysticks" fashion which perhaps was accurate but seemed rather quaint. People talked about the "beastly weather" and I wondered if I'd fallen into an Enid Blyton book. The point of view sometimes changed rather confusingly mid-stream as well.

The eventual unmasking of the perpetrator was perhaps a little disappointing - although clues had been left for the reader it's unlikely anyone would have guessed for sure who it was, and it could equally well have been one of many other people. Still, it was an interesting book purely in terms of the description of the Andaman Islands and a look back into the different lives people led at the tail end of the British Empire.

DEATH IN KASHMIR

In "Death In Kashmir" M M Kaye paints a fascinating picture of Kashmir on the cusp of independence, when the British rule in India finished in 1947. Her descriptions and evocation of the time and place are excellent and provide an interesting setting for her plot. Unfortunately I felt the characters in this story were rather wooden, they all spoke in a rather over-dramatic "jolly hockeysticks" style and were perhaps rather crude ciphers of normal people.

There's a faint (very faint!) romance in this story but this is a minor part of the plot which is about intelligence operatives becoming compromised and killed in Kashmir and our heroine, Sarah Parrish, finding herself in the thick of it. There are various minor plot twists, creeping around in the dark, that kind of thing, but overall this story was rather a disappointment. I found myself skim-reading the end, especially when the anti-communist paranoia of earlier decades appeared in this book. The setting is excellent but unfortunately this book is let down by characterisation and the rather over-long plot.